A Veszprém Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 23. (Veszprém, 2004)

Palágyi Sylvia köszöntése

mountings was published by the Museum „Laczkó Dezső", Veszprém in 2003; a portion of the Pannónia yoke finds was also presented in the 2002 annual volume of the Kölner Jahrbuch. Two further fields of activity for her are connected with the excavation of the Baláca villa, and the art works of outstanding significance found there: research into Roman mosaics and frescoes. She has given lectures at five international conferences which dealt with these studies. Since 1985, she has published articles on the frescoes of the main building: she publicised the latest Baláca relics in the columns of the Kölner Jahrbuch in 1991. She has treated the funeral aspects of this art, in connection with describing the painted tomb structures of the Roman period tumuli, in a work published in Paris. Seeing that she was incapable of wrestling alone with the quantity and overall problems of this relic group, she has also attempted to train disciples. In 1999, she organised a conference on this field entitled, „From excavation to presentation," with the participation of researchers and restorers. In 2001, she was a co-organiser of an international congress dealing with Roman period wall painting. From 1998 till 2001, she was vice-president of the Association Internationale pour le peinture murale antique, as well as the rapporteur for Hungary of the Association Internationale pour l'Étude de la mosaique antique. Of the whole, it can be said that her activities on the international scientific scene are quite outstanding. On 46 occasions, she has given lectures at various congresses and in foreign universities: at conferences dealing with Roman bronzes, symposia on villas, tumuli, frescoes or mosaics, at the Limes Congress, or Provinzialrömisches Kunstschaffen events. She herself has organised 11 international congresses in Veszprém, and has been co-organiser for events with many foreign participants. Her guests have always recalled with the greatest admiration the days spent in Veszprém, outings to Baláca, exhibitions held at the conferences, the variety of the programme, and the standard of consultation. At some of the congresses, Sylvia Palágyi has paraded internationally recognised experts in her research fields, but she has also organised events where the subject was alien to her specialised area of expertise (e.g. At a crossroads: EastWest, paganism-Christianity). She works in international cooperation on the excavation of the Roman period villas, and on their presentation and analysis. Besides the international professional societies mentioned above, she is also a committee member of ICOMOS archaeology parks, national monuments, member of the Public Body and the Archaeological Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), and chairman of the History Commission of the Veszprém Regional Committee (VEAB) of HAS. Since 1988, she has been archaeology secretary of the Hungarian Archaeology and Art History Association. In recognition of her services rendered, the Austrian Agricultural Institute elected her as a correspondence member in 1991. She has worked with great commitment in another branch of ancient art, in the publicising and evaluation of provincial Roman sculpture remains. Here too, the beginnings go back to 1976, when together with Sándor Tóth she produced the catalogue of the Tihany collection of Roman and mediaeval stone remains. Since 1989, together with researchers from the Styrian Archaeological Association, she has been one of the expediters of the Provinzialrömisches Kunstschaffen conference. This has been held every two years since then, for the purpose of making known the relics from this rather neglected field of classical art, so that this group of resources can also occupy a position in research on the development and tendencies of antique art. She is already organising the second symposium, and with one exception she has given lectures at every conference on the most varied topics: (background to the contents of chariot depictions), grave medallions rarely found in Pannónia, more recent chariot depictions, distinctive elements in the architecture and decorative art of villas in the Balaton region, an emperor's portrait from Pannónia, etc. The series of events has since grown from a central European initiative to a congress for the whole of Europe, the subj ect areas now including remains from Alexandria, imperial Greece, the city of Rome, Gaul and Britain. She has compiled a monograph on stone relics, as the third volume on Hungary of the Corpus Imperii Romani series, which was published in 1999 by Akadémiai Kiadó (coauthors: Christine Ertel and Ferenc Redő). 54 Veszprém County sites and 183 stone relics are described in the corpus, presenting in detail the ancient settlement conditions, the social status of the people who produced the materials, and analysing the development of the economic position of the stratum which commissioned the works of art. Due to the nature of the corpus, items which have been published repeatedly are just as much to be found among the sculptural remains, as are fragments presented here for the first time. 23 previously unpublished relics have also found their way into this repertoire, at the end of which can be found a thorough and picturesque presentation of the form and decorative motif types of the stone remains. 19